Back in the cavern with the Tesla machine looking thing once more. Electricity still jolted from the poles, the crystal computer glowing.

Shivering, we distanced ourselves from the cold portal.

Roy had removed his parka, giving it to Gertie to wear, as hers and her damp jumpsuit hung soaking from an instrument stand. He probably would have let her wear his jumpsuit too, but not a great fit.

She still shivered. "I wish I had some dry clothes. I'm practically nekkid."

Jamie chuckled. "That parka's bigger than you are. Just keep it closed until we get out of here and find you something better to wear."

"Sorry, kid. It's either this, or hypothermic shock." Roy huffed and rubbed his hands together. "Kinda feel bad for those people back there. We stole a bunch of their clothing, and Warkinde's buddies just trashed their place."

I shrugged. "They got supplies, radios and money. I think they might be okay."

I hopped back and forth, shaking off water. I wanted out of that cave fast, maybe to somewhere warm outside, or to a fireplace or a room with towels...or a book of towel-like things.

"Vorxora?" Roy called.

"Elliott..." ET moaned from the floor.

My first thought: Not again!

I momentarily forgot my frostbite and my cold dripping clothing for a moment.

ET looked as pale and sickly as that time we spent all night in the forest on earth, and I brought him home to my house.

I'd been freezing before, but now my heart became as cold as well, like something had died within me. Tearing up, I rushed to my alien friend's side, holding his clammy hand. "ET! What happened?"

ET only groaned and clutched my hand with a feeble grip.

"We got attacked by Warkinde's pollutants." Spike coughed, gesturing to our other friends.

Yizewo and Olxebak looked pretty bad too. I guess they'd tried to stand up to the enemy before he attacked that parallel world. Even Charlie lay on the floor, belly up, groaning and looking half dead.

Spike's skin had also taken on an unhealthy paleness.

I felt sorry for them all, but I didn't know what to do, and I wanted to be with ET in his last moments, you know?

Jamie sniffed and wiped a tear from her eye as she stared at our Qulpari friend. I think she'd grown to love ET just as much as me and Gertie did.

Gertie knelt at ET's other side. "Jamie! Sing the song! It destroys pollution!"

"No way! If I do that, I'll destroy him!"

"It doesn't have to! Remember what you did to the water!"

Jamie pointed to her collar. "Yeah? If I switch this on, I'll obliterate his head!"

Gertie gave her a reluctant nod, a forlorn expression on her face.

Spike leaned over us. "Don't use the collar."

Jamie stared at him. "What, just sing to him? How's that going to help?"

He pointed a glowing finger at her, made his heart glow bright enough for us to see it through his rib cage.

Gertie brightened, rising to her feet as she gave Jamie an expectant look.

Another tear rolled down Jamie's face as she knelt beside ET, placing a hand on his head. Although she looked hopeless, she still opened her mouth and crooned to him.

My eyes widened as her chest glowed, light radiating from her fingers.

Gertie grabbed her other hand and chimed in, her chest and hand glowing as well. I didn't hear my sister sing very often, but she wasn't terrible.

I myself didn't sing, but held Gertie's hand until I glowed as well.

ET slowly regained color, coughed and sat up.

Jamie sobbed a little and gave him a big hug. "Vorxora! I thought I lost you!"

He gave her a grateful smile. "You care!"

Jamie glanced up at me. The look that briefly crossed her features told volumes: That I'd been something of a disappointment, and ET had been the only thing making the whole journey from earth worthwhile.

...And, maybe, that she loved me mostly because of ET.

Yeah, she kissed me pretty passionately earlier, but she probably thought back to why we were there, doing all this. "Let's just say I've...become very fond of you."

Gerte coughed. It sounded pretty nasty. I stared in worriment. "You okay?"

She took a deep breath, and didn't cough again. "You know, it's funny, but I feel better than I ever had in my entire life."

I suppressed a chuckle. "You haven't exactly lived that long..."

"I know, but..."

Jamie nodded. "I feel it too. It's like...I had asthma or something, but it's all gone. Maybe it's because, you know, we were born and grew up in a world with a lot of air pollution, and didn't know how much we were breathing, and now it's all cleared up from our lungs."

Roy got a thoughtful look. "You know, ever since the Industrial Revolution, there's been carbon emissions in the air. And then we had huge gas guzzlers in the fifties, semis, oil fires, CFC aerosols, the atomic bomb..."

She sighed. "We need to help the others."

ET got up from the floor, singing with Jamie. He sang different lyrics, ones used during Gertie's funerary ritual, but it still worked, his hands and chest glowing. Perhaps it came from the love and caring we nonverbally expressed. I don't know.

Olxebak coughed and recovered, joining the others in song as they touched Yizewo.

Despite the music, Yizewo still had feathers. I didn't know when that would ever go away.

All that singing had a helpful side effect: It made the oily ooze retreat from the cavern, even from the tunnel beyond, where it had followed us.

I personally held Charlie when everyone serenaded him, I felt so guilty for treating him like crap.

In fact, once certain I couldn't be overheard too much, I myself sang as well, though using the Hebrew words I'd learned from Synagogue instead of the church hymn.

Jamie smirked, then forced herself to look serious when she noticed me looking.

Charlie recovered, but then shivered in my arms. "You're cold."

"I know. I was just in Antarctica, swimming around in ice water. You see my parka?"

He nodded. "You're making me cold."

Jamie rubbed her arms, drew her hands into the sleeves of her parka. "Speaking of which, are we done here? Can we go somewhere and warm up?"

Roy sighed. "Remember how we had to swim through dirty water to get here?"

"So I have to not only sing to the water, I have to dive into it as well."

"That's pretty much the long and the short of it. But I don't see any better way of getting out of here." He marched to the cavern entrance. "We probably should go. I didn't bring my communicator. My...cuculor and her nennop are probably worried sick!"

I rolled my eyes, but then frowned when I remembered I had my own alien relationship counselor.

Yizewo touched the glowing crystal mushrooms, causing the portal between the posts to vanish. Although it helped the temperature immensely, it still felt chilly.

Noticing how my sister shivered, Spike muttered something to her.

With a nod, Gertie closed her eyes.

He said something else, and she began glowing, her face, her hands, her fingers.

"You feel any warmer?" I asked.

"A little. At least I feel better."

ET had been facing the cavern wall, doing meditative breathing exercises, when he suddenly made the type of "Ooooh" noise he gave when seeing a radio or television for the first time. He pointed a glowing finger at the wall. "Look!"

The music notation had changed. Also, a smaller musical score had materialized next to it.

Annoyed, Jamie put her hands on her hips. "Great. More music to learn."

Roy rubbed his chin. "You think this has anything to do with what we did in that parallel world?"

"...Maybe." I walked up to the wall. "ET, does it say what these new ones are for?"

My alien friend nodded. "The first one is still for water purification, or the removal of pollutants. I do not know why it changed. The second one...it is for the restructuring of stone, and stonework."

"Good! I was getting tired of that other song!...What good is a song about stonework, though?"

"I do not know." ET brought out the crystal flute, giving the notes an experimental play.

A sudden rumbling tremor shook the cavern. We ran for cover as chunks of the cavern roof came crashing down, falling stalactites making tremendous splashes as they hit the underground lake.

"Stop! Stop!" Roy cried. "No more! Stop playing!"

ET dropped the flute. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to frighten—"

He didn't continue. While he'd been talking, the dust cleared, and although he stood with his back to the wall, he could see the astonishment on our faces.

ET spun around. "Oooooh!"

A stairwell had opened up in the rock behind him, a long flight of low, Qulpari friendly steps.

"Yes! A way out!" Jamie rushed to the stone archway, waving us onward. "Let's go!"

Roy frowned. "We don't even know where this thing goes."

"It beats swimming, doesn't it?"

"Look, you might be right, but I'm worried this might just go deeper into the cavern system, and Gertie's already close to getting hypothermia..."

She blew a raspberry.

ET didn't move. "Wait. We are not finished here. The water must be purified."

She glared at him in annoyance. "Jeez, can we at least hurry it up? I'm losing sensation in my toes!"

Me, I think I'd already lost sensation in mine. I could only hope that if I lost an appendage due to frostbite, ET could somehow say "Ouch" and heal it back in place.

Despite being more or less soaked to the bone, Gertie still appeared to be in good spirits. I think she qualified for the polar bear club. "I wanna see how this new song works!"

Roy glanced from the staircase to the cavern entrance. "Uh, Vorxora..." He frowned. "Oh right. We need you to play the song..." He turned to face the others. "Olxebak, Vukvuzan, somebody, these kids need supervision. Would you mind checking out that staircase and seeing if it leads out...with the utmost safety, of course."

Olxebak nodded. "I will check the stairs."

Yizewo took his hand. "I will go with you."

"How very chivalrous," Roy groaned.

Charlie, now healthy enough to fly again, shot off ahead of the two Qulpari, disappearing up the stairwell.

Roy gestured to the cavern entrance. "Vorxora, kids, let's go get this water cleansed, presumably."

A little easier to navigate our way back than it had been to reach the cenote in the first place. I hadn't noticed before, but Roy or someone else had scratched arrows into the rocks, so we didn't have to always sing to the walls.

Of course, ET and Jamie still did it by proxy, because of all the black slime residue on the floors.

Since we really didn't have words to the tune, Jamie made up lyrics as she sang mezzo piano (to avoid breaking up the floor). "I don't like Warkinde, I wish he'd go away, his slime is such a nuisance, if only we had a spray..." She stopped singing and frowned at ET. "Are we actually doing something besides cleaning the floor?"

ET paused his fluting. "We could walk out to the river, but this is no ordinary pollutant."

In seeming response, the slime took the shape of a witch-like hand, then a skull.

Jamie quickly resumed singing. "I'm looking over my dead dog Rover, who I overran with a mower, one leg is missing, the other is gone..." Not the right tune, but better than the bunch of "Tra la la's" she did following it.

Roy dug a little flashlight out of his parka, giving us some added illumination.

"Where'd you get that?" I muttered.

"I don't know, I just grabbed the coat. I'm more concerned about the set of keys I found."

We reached the river. Gertie stomped back and forth. "My feet are cold."

"Here." Although still freezing, I took off my parka and laid it before her. "Maybe you can stick your feet in the sleeves or pockets or something."

She pulled it on like a pair of pants and huddled on the floor as she watched Jamie.

More fluting and singing.

"If the river was whiskey, then I'd be a diving duck, if the river was whiskey, then I'd be a diving duck, I'd dive down to the bottom and never come up..." Again, wrong tune, but the black crud in the river boiled when she sang to the alien notes. "Tell fast talking Sam, everybody's going to jam, tell shakin' Boxcar Joe, we got sawdust on the flo', tell Chicken Head till I die, we're gonna have a time, when the fish head fills the air, be snuff juice everywhere, we gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long..."

Jamie stopped, but ET fluted on. "Okay, I'm singing a half remembered blues record from my dad's basement. Anyone got any ideas?"

"Follow your heart?" Roy joked.

She rolled her eyes. "Thanks."

Gertie pointed. "Look! The water's getting clear! Keep making up words for that song!"

Jamie blew a raspberry. "Stop polluting Jufuceri, this toxic sludge is really gross, it makes some monsters really scary, but we'll turn them all to toast, tra la..."

I groaned.

She crossed her arms, switching off her collar. "You try making up a dozen lyrics in the space of a minute. You want me to ruin some Beatles songs?"

"No..."

Jamie knelt by the water, switching the collar on again, to sing. "This song is getting old, we're all so chilly, freezing cold, this slimy stuff is causing harm, please make it go so we can warm..."

I rolled my eyes at her.

"What." Jamie hadn't even switched off her collar to speak to me this time - she'd discovered a subtle voice range that allowed her to amplify whispers instead of blasting me to pieces.

She returned her attention to the water. "Far from earth now have I roamed, away from family and my home, was it true love, am I insane, or did ET mess with my brain? This is not the life I ordered, do I have a brain disorder?"

With those questionable song lyrics, the black sludge in the river became less and less, replaced by generous quantities of bubbling foam. As she paused to come up with more things to sing, ET kept going with the flute, and the ooze disappeared completely.

Roy shined his flashlight on the water. "Is that good, Vorxora? We done? These children need to warm up sometime."

ET gave a slow nod. "The water is not completely cleansed of pollution, but it may be clear enough for us to restore the Gomovo and purge the rest."

Roy marched back into the tunnel. "Charlie! Olxebak! What's the word on that staircase?"

He shined his flashlight that way, crept further in. "Guys? Hello!"

Charlie zoomed into the tunnel, flying so quickly and low that he bowled Roy backwards on his rear. "Hey! Watch it! You could get a concussion in this place, horsing around like that!"

"Apologies. I have found a way to the surface, but it is very dark and I saw many things I didn't like."

"Wow. I'm pretty sure that's the most words you've said since I met you."

Charlie responded with nonsense noises and licking him on the face.

When we returned to the cenote, Olxebak and Yizewo awaited us at the foot of the staircase.

"Did you speak to anyone up top?" Roy asked. "Get someone with a heater and blankets?"

Both aliens shook their heads, trembling with fear.

"What's the matter? What's up there? We just faced down a couple slimy giants and you're scared now?"

"You faced down the giants," Yizewo stammered. "I did not. But there is something far more frightening upstairs."

Roy snickered. "Those chicken feathers are an appropriate look for you."

She furrowed her brow ridges. "What is a chicken?"

Groaning, he climbed the steps, waving us onward.

At first, the place didn't look so bad, just a chunk carved out of the cavern, with stairs, but when it curved around and got further into the rock, Qulpari skulls stared back at us.

Jamie and Gertie screamed, especially when some of them glowed, or lit up from the eye sockets.

Stacks of them, Qulpari and Abreya bones, arranged like sculptures. The flickering glow reminded me weirdly of Christmas lights.

The hairs on the back of my neck raised up. I kept feeling like someone hid around the corner, Michael Myers or maybe Warkinde and his friends.

ET must have noticed me freaking out, for he grabbed my hand consolingly. "From the age of the great plague. So many died..."

Roy scratched his head. "It's like those places under the streets of Paris..."

"They are artisans, patrons of the arts, and they were dying. They wanted to leave a legacy."

"We just literally opened up this staircase like a couple minutes ago, Vorxora. How do you know the whole history?"

"I've seen places like it. Also, I passed one that imparted a telepathic message."

Gertie, now calmed somewhat, pointed to a skull with glowing green eyes. "He was a botanist. They came from the North and had a pet." She again made sure to use the third gender word and not literally "he."

Although still edgy, we continued up the staircase.

I...saw things. Hallucination, had strange thoughts pop into my head. Memories that weren't mine.

Further along, the skulls became more ordinary, not glowing or anything, and Roy used his flashlight to guide our way.

Charlie hovered over our heads. "We're nearing the surface."

"Good. This place is starting to—"

An immense shadowy body crashed down in front of us, huge black eyes glinting like flint sparks in the gloom.

The thing opened its giant mouth and shrieked.